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Dr. Hal M. Lewis
Spertus in the News
"From Sanctuary to Boardroom:
A Jewish Approach to Leadership,"
by Hal M. Lewis
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.)
JUF News
By Cindy Sher
11/02/2006
Leadership plays a central role in Jewish history as well as in contemporary Jewish life. "From Sanctuary to Boardroom: A Jewish Approach to Leadership"–the new book by Hal M. Lewis, associate professor of Jewish Studies and the Dean of Public Programming at Spertus Jewish Studies in Chicago (a JUF/JF partner in serving the community)–explores key Jewish texts on leadership and applies them to the concepts of leading and managing organizations in the 21st century.
The book, which discusses topics including authority, charisma, uses and abuses of power, and shared power, juxtapose classical Jewish writings and insights on effective leadership with contemporary best practices of leadership initiated by top academics and business people today.
Lewis, trained as both an academic in Jewish studies and as Jewish communal professional including as the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Columbus, Ohio, discusses with JUF News Associate Managing Editor Cindy Sher why he finds meaning in the Jewish approach to leadership.
JUF News: Why did you write this book?
Hal M. Lewis: For me, the combination of leadership studies and Jewish studies seemed an intuitive organic mix and this is an area that not all that many people were looking at… It’s always been a puzzle to me and a source of some concern that when the Jewish community looks for advice on leadership, they frequently go to the business schools and management programs across the United States and rarely, if ever, think to consult Jewish sources on the issues of effective leadership.
Q. Why do so few people turn to Jewish text for insights on leadership?
A. One reason is the ‘myth of powerlessness’–to talk about effective leadership in a geopolitical sense, you frequently think of people who are in power who exercise leadership. For much of Jewish history, Jews were not in positions of power, and didn’t have political sovereignty, and there is a myth that runs through Jewish thinking that people in power have theories of leadership and people who never have power don’t really have theories. That’s a misreading of Jewish history. Even in Medieval Europe, when Jews were second-class citizens, they had opportunities to exercise leadership within their own communities and forge coalitions with the non-Jewish world.
[Another] possibility exists that the organized Jewish community looks at the great business schools in America as the only source of insight into leadership and would never consider the Jewish tradition because they feel like religious writings are not on the same par as graduate business schools. It’s not either/or. It can be both–Maimonides said we should consider the truth regardless of the source. What I’ve tried to do is juxtapose classical Jewish writings on effective leadership with contemporary best practices and some of the most progressive and insightful thinking on leadership from academic and business people today.
Q. What’s an example of a classical Jewish text paired with contemporary best practices?
A. A prominent business writer named Jim Collins wrote a book called “Good to Great," in which he explores some of the differences between companies that are good and companies that he calls ‘great.’ One of the leading factors that he identifies is called Level 5 Leadership–Great companies have Level 5 Leaders. Level 5 Leadership is a curious combination of two things that the Torah itself talks about repeatedly, which is a combination of tenacity and humility. Level 5 Leadership is nothing more than the leadership ideal envisioned as far back as the Torah and teased out in subsequent Jewish sources. The classical Jewish leader is Moses, who is renowned for not being the most powerful, not being the most visionary, not being the most decisive, but is renowned for being the most humble of all leaders.
Q. Why do you say leadership in Judaism is about behavior, not just about holding a title or a position, and what are the ‘behaviors of effective leaders’ as you refer to it in the book?
A. Leadership begins with the notion in Judaism that leadership is a behavior. The Hebrew word for leadership is manhigut–the Hebrew root means ‘behavior.’ That tells us that leadership and title is not the same thing.
The behaviors of effective leaders include first piety–a sense that every leader begins and ends as having been embraced, selected, and nurtured by God, which means that a human leader’s power is inherently limited and no human leader can ever exert absolute control. Other behaviors are tenacity, compassion, a sense of service to followers, humility, and consistency and fairness… These are wonderful, helpful insights whether one sees him or herself bound by Jewish law in a classic halachic (Jewish law) sense or whether one simply looks to an ancient tradition for insights."
Q. You say in your book that God is the only absolute leader and that both God and the people must sanction any human leader. How so?
A. The best guarantee that Jews have against a single model leader coalescing power to the point of totalitarianism or autocracy has been the fact that leaders in the classical sense understood that their power to lead comes from two places–God and the people: Kings had to be authorized by both God and the people. Even the priests required a ceremony in which the people authorized their leadership as well. And the prophets had to prove themselves to the people even though they were hand-selected by God. A leader who claims they have God on their side–that [can be] a dangerous thing. On the other hand, somebody who says, ‘I was selected by the people, that’s my right. On the basis of that election or appointment, I can do whatever I want without limits’–we understand that that’s dangerous as well. Think about mid-20th Century Germany. So we have this stellar combination that a leader’s powers come from God and the people."
Q. Who do you hope reads your book?
A. I would hope that anybody who works on behalf of the Jewish community in some capacity reads this. [Also], people are turning to Judaism for insights on all sorts of things–mysticism, spirituality, food, ecology–so anyone interested in Jewish topics should read this."
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